Anti-censor funds pulled from State?

A congressional debate over how best to promote Internet freedom abroad is about to run into budget politics.

A little-known provision in both Senate and House stopgap plans would strip the State Department of some of its funding for technology that breaks through Internet censors.

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Top congressional appropriators tell POLITICO that State hasn’t spent the cash as fast as foreign dictators have shut off access to sites like Facebook, YouTube and Gmail. That’s why they’re now calling for the transfer of the money to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which has stewardship over Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.

The provision is baked into Senate Democrats’ continuing resolution, which would fund the government until the end of September. It would transfer “not less than” $15 million of State’s money to support censor-busting technology to the BBG.

House Republicans’ plan, which cleared a vote in February, would transfer a slightly smaller amount of $10 million to the broadcasting agency.

To critics in both parties, the decision to transfer the funds set aside for Internet censorship circumvention technology is a byproduct of State’s slowness to spend it. Since 2008, the department has received about $50 million from Congress to fund technologies that would penetrate the kinds of firewalls used in China — yet critics contend about $30 million of it remains unused.

There is “frustration that funds Congress provided in the past — $50 million so far — have not been utilized in the manner and as quickly as intended,” one Democratic aide on the Senate Appropriations Committee told POLITICO.

The aide noted that Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who leads the appropriations subcommittee that has stewardship over State, “doesn’t measure results by how much money is spent.” But, the source continued: “Over several years the Congress, through the budget process, has made clear this is a priority — and the State Department has taken a long time to act.”

A senior official at the State Department told POLITICO last week the agency is spending its money cautiously so that it can diversify the censor-busting technology it supports and fund only those tools that have demonstrated success.